Node.js Basics — MongoDB Indexes

Node.js is a popular runtime platform to create programs that run on it.

It lets us run JavaScript outside the browser.

In this article, we’ll look at how to start using Node.js to create programs.

Creating Indexes

We can create indexes in our collection to let us enable searches in the collection.

For example, we can write:

const { MongoClient } = require('mongodb');
const connection = "mongodb://localhost:27017";
const client = new MongoClient(connection);

async function run() {
  try {
    await client.connect();
    const db = client.db("test");
    const testCollection = await db.collection('test');
    const indexResult = await testCollection.createIndex({ name: 1 });
    console.log(indexResult)
    await testCollection.deleteMany({})
    const result = await testCollection.insertMany([
      { "_id": 1, "name": "apples", "qty": 5, "rating": 3 },
      { "_id": 2, "name": "bananas", "qty": 7, "rating": 1 },
      { "_id": 3, "name": "oranges", "qty": 6, "rating": 2 },
      { "_id": 4, "name": "avocados", "qty": 3, "rating": 5 },
    ]);
    console.log(result)
  } finally {
    await client.close();
  }
}
run().catch(console.dir);

We call the createIndex method on the testCollection to add an index to it.

Then we can query the collection by writing:

const { MongoClient } = require('mongodb');
const connection = "mongodb://localhost:27017";
const client = new MongoClient(connection);

async function run() {
  try {
    await client.connect();
    const db = client.db("test");
    const testCollection = await db.collection('test');
    const indexResult = await testCollection.createIndex({ name: 1 });
    console.log(indexResult)
    await testCollection.deleteMany({})
    const result = await testCollection.insertMany([
      { "_id": 1, "name": "apples", "qty": 5, "rating": 3 },
      { "_id": 2, "name": "bananas", "qty": 7, "rating": 1 },
      { "_id": 3, "name": "oranges", "qty": 6, "rating": 2 },
      { "_id": 4, "name": "avocados", "qty": 3, "rating": 5 },
    ]);
    console.log(result)
    const query = { name: "apples" };
    const sort = { name: 1 };
    const projection = { name: 1 };
    const cursor = testCollection
      .find(query)
      .sort(sort)
      .project(projection);
    cursor.forEach(console.dir);
  } finally {
    await client.close();
  }
}
run().catch(console.dir);

We can create a text index by setting the value of the key to index to 'text' when we call createIndex .

For example, we can write:

const { MongoClient } = require('mongodb');
const connection = "mongodb://localhost:27017";
const client = new MongoClient(connection);

async function run() {
  try {
    await client.connect();
    const db = client.db("test");
    const testCollection = await db.collection('test');
    await testCollection.dropIndexes();
    const indexResult = await testCollection.createIndex({ name: 'text' });
    console.log(indexResult)
    await testCollection.deleteMany({})
    const result = await testCollection.insertMany([
      { "_id": 1, "name": "apples", "qty": 5, "rating": 3 },
      { "_id": 2, "name": "bananas", "qty": 7, "rating": 1 },
      { "_id": 3, "name": "oranges", "qty": 6, "rating": 2 },
      { "_id": 4, "name": "avocados", "qty": 3, "rating": 5 },
    ]);
    console.log(result)
    const query = { $text: { $search: "apples" } };
    const projection = { name: 1 };
    const cursor = testCollection
      .find(query)
      .project(projection);
    cursor.forEach(console.dir);
  } finally {
    await client.close();
  }
}
run().catch(console.dir);

We have:

const indexResult = await testCollection.createIndex({ name: 'text' });

to add a text index to the name field.

Then we can write:

const query = { $text: { $search: "apples" } };

to make a text search query and return the result from it.

Conclusion

We can add index to a MongoDB collection with the createIndex method.

To enable text searches, we can add text indexes.